Our Tools and Strategies

How We Do What We Do

I encourage students to choose the best - not necessarily the most high-tech! - tool for the job, and to combine tools for the best effects. Students may start with hand-drawn scenes or characters, then scan them to a digital format, drop them into Comic Life and add text and more from there. Or, students may gather design ideas from the web to use as the basis for hand drawing. When planning or interviewing, students can take notes on paper, on the computer, on a portable word processor, or record them using the computer's built-in microphone or an iPod with a microphone add-on.

Hardware

• Apple computers - mostly MacBooks on a wireless cart - for most of our work
• Canon flatbed scanner, for getting our handmade work into digital form
• Digital cameras and built-in iSight cameras
• Wacom Graphire graphics tablet, for more detailed drawing on the computer
• iPod with record function, for recording interviews
• SmartBoard, for group discussions, presentations and group editing
• more...

Software

• Apple's iWork Pages, for most of our writing and layout
• Comic Life, for comics, some mastheads and other graphic layout
• Skitch, for basic screen shots and drawing - in Spring 2007, our students 'beta tested' this software for the people at plasq.com. The developers LOVED their feedback!
• Inspiration, for creating diagrams and outlines
• PhotoBooth, Apple's built-in camera effects software, for distorting and playing with photos, because it's fun!
• Web-based tools and software, including this wiki and many cool art programs that are online and free!
• more...

Other Tools

Pens, paper, scissors, glue, clipboards, whatever it takes!
One parent has generously loaned us a light table that is over 3 feet long. It's great for doing final copies of our hand drawn illustrations, comics, etc. We have a nice set of art pens in different widths, and a few other drawing tools.